


Frost

by JazzBaby466



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Animal Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 22:42:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9463631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzBaby466/pseuds/JazzBaby466
Summary: Remember the dog Charles and Richard brought home from the greyhound track in Pownal?For the short time it was with them, the twins loved it and it followed Camilla everywhere. In this story, she remembers those days as well as the funeral they held for it. And, of course, this was only the first of several deaths, and it was the only funeral Camilla remembers feeling sad at.(I was in the mood for Camilla's PoV and for painful reflections, I guess.)





	

Sometimes, usually out of nowhere, I think of the dog.

Soft paws, thin coat of fur, sharp ribs sticking out. A bit jittery, a bit vulnerable, but gentle and lovable with those kind brown eyes.

One time, she chewed up one of those sheepskin rugs that belonged to the landlord. It was a lot of trouble to cover that up, but I could never be angry with her.

The others didn’t seem too fond of the greyhound, but Charles and I were in love. We had always wanted a dog, see, but nana had never allowed it. Too much trouble, she’d said. Too expensive, too.  
So instead, both as a coping mechanism and a form of protest, I suppose, Charles and I made up an imaginary dog for ourselves. We never actually discussed the breed, so I can’t be sure what he thought of at the time, but I always pictured it to be a Red Setter for some reason. It was a girl. We called her “Lala”.

Children’s imagination is fascinating. I still remember Lala as if she was real: endless summer afternoons spent roaming outside, trampling over branches, skipping over stones, breaking through fields of tall grass, crossing narrow creeks; and that flicker of red fur always in the corner of my eye. I remember Charles and myself in the back of a car; uncomfortable, nervous, the way we get on car trips, and petting the air between us for comfort. _Good girl, Lala._

One time, we were at Francis’s, out in the country, and Charles and I were taking a walk down to the lake with the dog happily running ahead of us, chasing after a rabbit, when I paused and looked at Charles.

“What?”, he asked, on a laugh, when he noticed my cocked head and quizzical expression.

“Do you remember Lala?”

He seemed confused, but only for a second. “God, _Lala_!”, he exclaimed then, a smile breaking on his face. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Now we’ve got a real dog”, I said, looking fondly at Frost, who was leaping and turning sharp corners in imitation of the rabbit.

Charles nodded and gave me a small wink. “Perks of being an adult. Nana can’t say no anymore.”

 

By the time she came to us, the greyhound wasn’t supposed to live much longer. Francis had warned us of this and Henry provided occasional gloomy reminders of her impending demise, but until it happened, I refused to believe it. Frost seemed so agile, so lively. Sometimes, she would curl up next to me and I would run my fingers over her protruding ribs, then put down my hand on them and feel that heart, a runner’s heart, beat strongly, booming in her large chest cavity like a drum in a big empty room. The thought that any day, it could stop beating, that pumping muscle at once reduced to dead organic mass, seemed almost unbearable.

And though it had, as Henry reminded us, without much emotion, only been a matter of time, Frost’s heart attack when she chased after a squirrel one morning, still came as a shock to Charles and me. One of us, I don’t even remember who, suggested to have a funeral for her, and I could tell from the look on their faces that the others thought us ridiculous at first. Henry opened his mouth and it looked like he was going to make some curt, finalizing remark to lay the idea to rest immediately after we had brought it up, so I spoke up quickly.

“Please. It would mean a lot to me.”

Instantly, Francis’s features softened, and Henry closed his mouth again. Richard, I noticed, averted his eyes in embarrassment. He became uncomfortable easily in regard to emotional matters and was still relatively new in our group. Francis, in contrast, reached out and squeezed my hand.

“You liked her very much, didn’t you?”

I nodded, biting my lip and fighting sudden and unexpected tears that were threatening to dwell up in my eyes. When I glanced at Charles, he met my gaze looking equally broken.

We sat on the porch in silence for a while, the day’s last light washing over us, flocks of birds overhead, moving south at last to escape Vermont’s harsh winter.

“I mean, we knew from the beginning that she didn’t have much time left”, Charles said hoarsely. “But somehow, that doesn’t change things.”

“Somehow, it doesn’t”, I agreed, speaking softly and staring into the distance.

“I’m sorry”, Richard said, a little awkwardly, shifting in his chair.

I was going to respond with a small appreciative sound of acknowledgement, but against my will, it came out more as a whimper than anything else.

Henry regarded me with sympathy. “If the dog was still here now, it would comfort you, Camilla”, he said, and then, quoting: “ _The greyhound whined with her, distressed by her distress. If her mistress was crying, so was the puppy_.”

“I am not Emma Bovary”, I replied in a quiet voice. And if the greyhound was still here now, I added sadly in my mind, I wouldn’t need to be comforted.

“No”, Henry said. “But if you want a funeral for the dog, we’ll have a funeral.”

And so it was decided.

 

It took a day for us to arrange everything. Overnight, we kept the dog in the basement, with some vague idea about keeping the dead body cool, but I didn’t like the thought of it down there, paws turned into cold rubber, heart still, nothing but a lump surrounded by thick darkness.

“Do you think we’ll feel better after the funeral?”, Charles asked me, and I knew he was thinking of that body, too, somewhere below us, only covered hastily with one white bedsheet, like a layer of snow.

“I think we’ll feel better once she is buried”, I said. And I was right, actually. I did feel better when she was in the ground. But, as I came to learn, it doesn’t always work like that.

 

Despite Henry’s initial reluctance to the whole funeral idea, when he saw how much it meant to Charles and me, he made an effort.

“My aunt buried her cats in the back garden”, Francis said. “She even bought headstones for them. We could put the dog there, I suppose.”

Which is what we did. Richard and Francis dug up the grave with big shovels from the shed. The hole seemed disturbingly big and yet we filled it with dirt so quickly after Charles and I had lifted the dog’s body and placed it there. Henry kindly provided the _epitaphios logos._ The first half he had written in Greek; the second, mostly for Richard’s benefit, I suspect, was in English. He read it in his usual monotone, but in spite of their relatively neutral delivery, the words he had chosen were so somber and strong that emotion was transported anyway.

It was a beautiful day: serene sky, soft winter sunlight, call of birds in the distance, frost on the grass, clean air. Funny to think: this was the first of our three funerals, and it was the only one I felt sad at.

At Bunny’s funeral, a few months later, I was flooded by a variety of emotion: horror, fear, desperation, and at times, when I saw Bunny’s father cry and when Henry read that Housman poem Bunny used to recite - _The rose-lipt girls are sleeping, in fields where roses fade –_ I felt white-hot regret and hideous, gut-twisting shame, too. But sadness, never. Genuine melancholy, the bitter-sweet sort of ancient hymns and silent tears and blazing pyres, is something I only experienced at the dog’s funeral.

Of course, Bunny’s funeral was also the time the whole business with Charles was going on. He found out about Henry and me when we were staying at the Corcoran’s, and for days he was in a rage.

“I can be with whoever I want”, I told him, fighting to keep my voice steady. “I am not your property.”

It breaks my heart, too, to think of the way Charles treated poor Francis during those days; the way he used him as a quick and easy way to release tension, only to discard him like a broken object the next minute.

“You’re being cruel”, I informed him accusingly. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to him?”

“I can be with whoever I want”, he replied, repeating my earlier words with sharp, painful mockery.

 

Henry’s funeral might have been the most painful, but I couldn’t bring myself to go, and in the car with Charles, on the way to Virginia, as I thought of the ceremony and what the coffin might look like, I felt very distant from it all, mercifully detached.

As strange as it sounds, to this day, if I want to cry, all I have to do is think back to that afternoon out in the country, when we mourned the greyhound’s passing. And always, always Henry’s voice echoes in my head:

“A lovely companion, a source of joy. Even as she has passed, she will be remembered and thought of fondly, time and again.”

And as he said it, I looked up at the sky and spotted three birds, flying south; one ahead of the others, moving with strong, even strokes, two following closely behind. For some reason, the image cut straight to my heart and I was swept away by a strong, global sort of pain. And if my mind worked a little bit more like Henry’s, I might have recognized them for what they were: an omen.

The first bird for the funeral we were at. And two others following closely behind.

As Julian used to say: _Nothing is ever truly hidden to those who have the will and the bravery to see._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! (Comments and kudos make my day! ;) <3 )


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